years. Were he to do so today… he took a sip of coffee and admitted to himself that he might just find himself searching for an excuse not to bring the subject in. There were always ways. He'd worked on six of those cases as a young agent—kidnapping for money was a very rare crime today; the word had gotten out that it was a losing game, that the full power of the FBI descended on such cases like the wrath of God—and only now did he understand how hateful such crimes were. You had to be a parent, you had to know the feel of tiny arms around your neck to understand the magnitude of such a violation— but then your blood turned to ice, and you didn't so much turn off your emotions as block them out for as long as you had to before letting them free again. He remembered his first squad supervisor, Dominic DiNapoli— 'the toughest wop this side of the Gambino family' was the office joke—crying like a baby himself as he carried the living victim of such a crime to see her parents. Only now did he understand how it was just one more sign of Dom's toughness. Yeah. And that subject would never get out of Atlanta Federal Penitentiary.
Then it was time to get Megan up. She was curled up in her full-body sleeper, the blue one with Casper the Friendly Ghost on it. She was outgrowing it, he saw. Her little toes were pushing at the plastic feet. They did grow so fast. He tickled her nose, and her eyes opened.
'Daddy!' She sat up, then stood to give him a kiss, and Pat wondered how kids woke up with a smile. No adult ever did. And the day began in earnest with another trip to the bathroom. He noted with pleasure that her training pants were dry. Megan was catching on to sleeping through the night—it had been a struggle for a while— though it seemed a very strange thing to be proud about, he thought. He started to shave, a daily event that utterly fascinated his daughter. Done, he bent down so that she could feel his face and pronounce it, 'Okay!'
Dinner this morning was oatmeal with sliced banana and a glass of apple juice, and watching the Disney Channel on the kitchen TV while Daddy returned to his paper. Megan took her bowl and glass to the dishwasher all by herself, a very serious task which she was learning to master. The hard part was getting the bowl into the holder properly. Megan was still working on that. It was harder than doing her own shoes, which had Velcro closures. Mrs. Daggett had told him that Megan was an unusually bright child, one more thing to beam with pride about, followed by the sadness, always, of remembering his wife. Pat told himself that he could see Deborah's face in hers, but the honest part of the agent occasionally wondered how much of that was a wish and how much fact. At least she seemed to have her mother's brains. Maybe the bright expression was what he saw?
The ride in the truck was routine. The sun was up now, and the traffic still light. Megan was in her safety seat, as usual looking at the other cars with wonderment. The arrival was routine also. There was the agent working in the 7-Eleven, of course, plus the advance team at Giant Steps. Well, nobody would ever kidnap his little girl. At the working level, rivalry between the Bureau and the Service largely disappeared, except for the occasional inside joke or two. He was glad they were there, and they didn't mind having this armed man come in. He walked Megan in, and she immediately ran off to hug Mrs. Daggett and put her blanky in her cubby in the back, and her day of learning and play began.
'Hey, Pat,' the agent at the door greeted him.
' 'Morning, Norm.' Both men enjoyed an early-morning yawn.
'Your schedule's as screwed up as mine,' Special Agent Jeffers replied. He was one of the agents who rotated on and off the SANDBOX detail, this morning working as part of the advance team.
'How's the wife?'
'Six more weeks, and then we have to think about shopping for a place like this. Is she as good as she seems?'
'Mrs. Daggett? Ask the President,' O'Day joked. 'They've sent all their kids here.'
'I guess it can't be too bad,' the Secret Service man agreed. 'What's the story on the Kealty case?'
'Somebody at State is lying. That's what the OPR guys think.' He shrugged. 'Not sure which. The polygraph data was worthless. Your guys picking up on anything?'
'You know, it's funny. He sends his detail off a lot. He's actually said to them that he doesn't want to put them in a position where they'd have to—'
'Gotcha.' Pat nodded. 'And they have to play along?'
'No choice. He's meeting with people, but we don't always know who, and we're not allowed to find out what he's doing against SWORDSMAN.' A wry shake of the head. 'Don't you love it?'
'I like Ryan.' His eyes scanned the area, looking for trouble. It was automatic, just like breathing.
'We love the guy,' Norm agreed. 'We think he's going to make it. Kealty's full of crap. Hey, I worked his detail back when he was V.P., okay? I fuckin' stood post outside the door while he was inside boffin' some cookie or other. Part of the job,' he concluded sourly. The two federal agents shared a look. This was an inside story, to be repeated only within the federal law-enforcement community, and while the Secret Service was paid to protect their principals and keep all the secrets, that didn't mean they liked it.
'I think you're right. So things here okay?'
'Russell wants three more people, but I don't think he's going to get it. Hell, we have three good agents inside, and three doing overwatch next door' — he wasn't revealing anything; O'Day had figured that one out— 'and—'
'Yeah, across the street. Russell looks like he knows his stuff.'
'Grandpa's the best,' Norm offered. 'Hell, he's trained half the people in the Service, and you oughta see him shoot. Both hands.'
O'Day smiled. 'People keep telling me that. One day I'll have to invite him over for a friendly match.'
A grin. 'Andrea told me. She, uh, pulled your Bureau file—'
'What?'
'Hey, Pat, it's business. We check everybody out. We have a principal in here every day, y'dig?' Norm Jeffers went on. 'Besides, she wanted to see your firearms card. I hear you're pretty decent, but I'm telling you, man, you want to play with Russell, bring money, y'hear?'
'That's what makes a horse race, Mr. Jeffers.' O'Day loved such challenges, and he'd yet to lose one.
'Bet your white ass, Mr. O'Day.' His hand went up. He checked his earpiece, then his watch. 'They just started moving. SANDBOX is on the way. Our kid and your kid are real buddies.'
'She seems like a great little girl.'
'They're all good kids. A couple of rough spots, but that's kids. SHADOW is going to be a handful when she starts dating for real.'
'I don't want to hear it!'
Jeffers had a good laugh. 'Yeah, I'm hoping ours'll be a boy. My dad—he's a city police captain in Atlanta— he says that daughters are God's punishment on ya for being a man. You live in fear that they'll meet somebody like you were at seventeen.'
'Enough! Let me go to work and deal with some criminals.' He slapped Jeffers on the shoulder.
'She'll be here when you get back, Pat.'
O'Day passed on the usual coffee refill across Ritchie Highway, instead heading south to Route 50. He had to admit that the Service guys knew their stuff. But there was at least one aspect of presidential security that the Bureau was handling. He'd have to talk to the OPR guys this morning—informally, of course.
ONE DIED, ONE went home, and at roughly the same time. It was MacGregor's first Ebola death. He'd seen enough others, heart-attack failures-to-resuscitate, strokes, cancer, or just old age. More often than not, doctors weren't there, and the job fell on nurses. But he was there for this one. At the end, it wasn't so much peace as exhaustion. Saleh's body had fought as best it could, and his strength had merely extended the struggle and the pain, like a soldier in a hopeless battle. But his strength had given out, finally, and the body collapsed, and waited for death to come. The alarm chirp on the cardiac monitor went off, and there was nothing to do but flip it off. There would be no reviving this patient. IV leads were removed, and the sharps carefully placed in the red-plastic container. Literally everything that had touched the patient would be burned. It wasn't all that remarkable. AIDS and some hepatitis victims were similarly treated as objects of deadly contamination. Just with Ebola, burning the bodies was preferable—and besides, the government had insisted. So, one battle lost.
MacGregor was relieved, somewhat to his shame, as he stripped off the protective suit for the last time, washed thoroughly, then went to see Sohaila. She was still weak, but ready to leave to complete her recovery. The most recent tests showed her blood full of antibodies. Somehow her system had met the enemy and passed the test. There was no active virus in her. She could be hugged. In another country she would have been kept in for further tests, and would have donated a good deal of blood for extensive laboratory studies, but again the local
